City of Hope becomes 5AM Solution's first open source client

Microarray Enterprise Manager chosen to manage City of Hope’s Core FacilityPHOENIX, AZ, January 18, 2006 -- 5AM Solutions, a leading provider of custom software solutions for the life sciences, signed a services agreement today with the City of Hope (COH) to support the adoption of the Microarray Enterprise Manager (MEM) as the enterprise solution for COH's Microarray Core Facility. 5AM will modify the source code to run on a completely open source environment. Future efforts will target incorporating the core facility's business processes into the workflow modules. It also will include investigating the feasibility of having the data management system cover new areas of research such as proteomics, in addition to joint collaborations supporting further development through grants.

Dr. Yate-Ching Yuan, Manager for the Department of Biomedical Informatics at COH, said "We are excited about our collaboration with 5AM and the power of the software to help us apply our expertise, adopt our business processes, and serve our research community."

Dr. Richard Jove, Deputy Director of the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, said "This is an important collaboration among 5AM, TGen and City of Hope, bringing together leading experts on molecular analysis of tumors, which will ultimately benefit cancer patients with improved treatment".

After a thorough evaluation of the competition, MEM was chosen due to its ability to integrate directly with the Affymetrix platform, the scientific contributions from a wide range of experts in the field who guided its development, the ability to produce and validate MIAME compliance, and the open source option and services provided by 5AM. Originally developed for an NIH-sponsored national microarray consortium (http://arrayconsortium.tgen.org), 5AM produced an open source version in October 2005.

5AM CEO Brent Gendleman said, "We are excited by the opportunity to extend our services to such a distinguished research institute as the City of Hope and continue to improve our offerings of solutions to the life science community." ."

Dr. Dietrich Stephan, Chairman of the consortium and Director of the Neurogenomics Division of TGen, said, "this solution results in improvements of experiment design, reproducibility, and the public sharing of meaningful information. 5AM worked with our leaders, lab scientists, and bioinformaticians intimately to translate our vision into reality. We are excited to see the software evolve to support other institutes"

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About 5AM Solutions5AM Solutions is a software provider whose solutions and services target life science companies who view data organization, work-flow optimization, analysis, and global collaboration as key components of their success. Our J2EE interoperable web solutions grant insight into the complex data produced by the genomic revolution integrated with the directed collection of clinical data across geography, discipline and IT disparities found among collaborators around the globe or down the hall. An IBM Life Sciences Optimized partner, we share a common passion with our clients to advance medicine and science through our contribution of state-of-the-art software development. www.5amsolutions.com

About City of HopeCity of Hope is one of the world's leading research and treatment centers for cancer, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening diseases. Named by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's best medical centers for cancer treatment, City of Hope is a Comprehensive Cancer Center, the highest designation bestowed by the National Cancer Institute, and a founding member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Founded in 1913, City of Hope is a pioneer in the fields of bone marrow transplantation and genetics.

City of Hope's scientific knowledge is shared with medical centers locally and globally, helping patients battling life-threatening diseases. For more information, visit www.cityofhope.org.

About TGenTGen is a not-for-profit research institute whose primary mission is to make and translate genomic discoveries into advances in human health. Translational genomics research is a relatively new field employing innovative advances arising from the Human Genome Project to apply to the development of diagnostics, prognostics and therapies for cancer, neurological disorders, diabetes and other complex diseases. www.tgen.org